December 21, 2017 - B&K Equipment and Crane Service (B&K) is one of the latest North American companies to discover the benefits of Grove’s new lineup of rough-terrain cranes, which have been designed and tested at Manitowoc’s Product Verification Center (PVC) to ensure dependability in a wide range of working environments. Wyalusing, Pennsylvania-based B&K has been renting two Grove GRT8100 rough-terrain cranes for over a year. The 100 USt cranes have helped to streamline operations on several of the company’s projects, including the construction of a gas-fired power plant.
Sam Hess, crane manager for B&K, said that the GRT8100’s reliability and competitive load chart gave it the versatility to handle a wide array of tasks while building the plant.
“My crew and I are all 100 percent impressed with the GRT8100,” he said. “It’s reliable enough to handle any task we throw at it. Our operators have used it for everything from setting 0.5 USt steel beams to lifting 12.5 USt boilers. It has a very strong chart for a crane of this size. You don’t normally see a crane of this capacity with this small of a footprint.”
Shortly before construction of the power plant began in September of 2016, Hess got the chance to operate the crane himself at a hydraulic frack well, also located in Pennsylvania, and the crane’s reliability made an impact on that job, as well.
“I used the GRT8100 to hoist an 11.5 USt coiled tubing injector above the well-head,” he explained. “We needed a crane that could hold the injector in place for 30 hours on a very congested job site, and this crane was ideal for getting the job done.”
The GRT8100 has been designed and built for today’s construction market with a 154 ft, five-section main boom, which provides better reach and greater versatility. The rough-terrain also has a tilting cab, impressive load charts and the benefit of extensive component testing at Manitowoc’s Product Verification Center (PVC) to ensure quality and reliability. In addition, the crane comes standard with Manitowoc’s Crane Control System (CCS), which offers operators the most intuitive interface on the market.
“The CCS has been very user-friendly,” Hess said. “You can adjust your controls and deploy your outriggers using the same convenient dial. You don’t have to reach up and use a touch screen each time. Accessing all of the crane’s boom length configurations is very intuitive, too.”
B&K rented its GRT8100s from Stephenson Equipment, which has been providing sales and rentals of construction equipment, paving machinery and cranes since 1957. The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based company serves customers from six locations across its home state and New York. Stephenson is an official dealer of Manitowoc, Grove, National Crane and Potain cranes.
B&K Equipment and Crane Service was founded in 1989 in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. The company is family owned and operated, and has grown to comprise more than 50 employees, three locations, a fleet of trucks, trailers, cranes, oil field equipment and hundreds of construction equipment assets.
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